


Re:Told: The Commentary

by HanaReiGirl, midnightmnkm



Series: Etrian Odyssey Re:Told [3]
Category: Etrian Odyssey Series
Genre: Author Commentary, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-03-02 13:01:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18811417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HanaReiGirl/pseuds/HanaReiGirl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightmnkm/pseuds/midnightmnkm
Summary: A commentary on changes made to the rewritten series, scrapped plans and stuff.





	1. Re:Told Universe (1)

**Author's Note:**

> Rewrite version of the story by **mnkm** at /works/17906441.  
> I've always wanted to keep a commentary somewhere regarding changes I've made, so that any curious individuals can read about it, I guess. History of the ReTold series, perhaps? Something like that, hahaha.

Originally, in the first version, the Re:Told cast was an alone cast, and the Millennium Girl cast barely existed. I might as well as call it a fanfiction of the original first game, rather than of the Untold series, but I did bring in Rosa as an acquaintance of Remilia for cringetastic backstory reasons. The original's plot would basically just be the usual 'adventure team' story with a bunch of drama and- pray tell- lots of gay girl on girl romance thrown here and there.

I had a full cast of five girls at that time:

\- Remilia (Hexer, female portrait with grey hair)

\- Rin (Medic, female portrait with orange hair)

\- Scarlet (Landsknecht, female portraits with red hair)

\- Valeria (Landsknecht, female portrait with brown hair)

\- Senna (Ronin, female portrait with blue hair)

The planned pairings are pretty obvious, but at the time I wasn't sure what to do with Senna. But really, that's for Senna's commentary.

Anyways, you know how that went. I got really, really out of it since I wasn't that creative, without much to write about other than the same formula of they do this and they do that. I had the ambition for the series, I just... didn't have the motivation to stick through it.

* * *

Eventually, I thought about rewriting it. That's the first rewrite, the second version.

At that point, I figured I should just take The Millennium Girl's story... and  _give_ it to Remilia! Except she wouldn't be a girl who woke up after several years, she'd be a girl who... somehow... knew of the Yggdrasil Core's threat... and came to Etria to destroy it? It... makes less sense the more I think about it now. I involved Gladsheim, and planned to bring back Rosa's involvement with her.

I also upped the gay level of pretty much all the girls there. A major difference was, though, I started with  _four_ girls this time. I had new plans for Senna, but... again, I'll save that for Senna's character page.

(The next chapter of the first rewrite series, which never made it to publication, would actually involve one scene featuring Senna and another new character.)

Eventually, I got into the idea of making seasonal-related specials, and a Christmas special came out. It had spoilers, of course, including Remilia and Rin getting together (obvious), and Scarlet and Valeria getting together (obvious), and Senna raising some forest folk after Kupala's death? (I can't recall how I ever got to that idea, but hey, what happened, happened.) I actually think I listed that point stating that the forest folks were Kupala's kids... somehow. Was I drunk? Who knows? The other thing I also hinted at is Alraune's involvement, relating to either Remilia and Rin, or Valeria and Senna (not Scarlet? Huh...), or both.

Because I stopped updating the main series after getting to Gladsheim (where I upped the gay level even more), the Christmas special never became any closer of becoming a reality, so really. It was kind of disappointing.

* * *

The current rewrite story, courtesy of  **mnkm** (I'm assisting in ideas and plans, of course), is a lot closer to my ideal imagination of how it should've went. Less obvious gay tease, less overpowered display of the cast, and especially less spotlight on them. In fact, when he told me we should have them coexist with The Millenium Girl's cast, I was like- in quote- ' _fucking sold!_ ' ...okay, that's a lie. I said ' _eh, whatever, it doesn't matter._ '

But yeah. So we planned to bring back The Millenium Girl's cast, and especially the genderbent Highlander 'Freya ' whom I've also wrote in an alternate ReTold: The Millennium Girl story. It's... a pretty lazy way of avoiding the need to rewrite that other (abandoned even faster) series too, even though we eventually turned Frederica's party into a minor character cameo thing.

Senna remains absent again, too. Plans for her are pretty similar to the first rewrite's plans, and even though that one technically was never shown, he thought it sounded pretty nice, and so we kept it. Yes, that means again, I'll save more details for Senna's character page.

The later chapters have been a bit forced though, we were lacking some ideas in how to approach future chapters before ones we've planned for sure. We seem to be putting in a bit of sadistic events against Remilia, too- her losing an eye (temporarily), her losing her right hand (temporarily), and even her being disheartened when people pointed out how she just recently almost lost to the Bloody One-Arm (aw). Are we sadists? Well... no, we just kinda pushed those ideas out there because... well. We got nothing else.

Me and  **mnkm** are trying, though, so hopefully, we get better at planning the coming chapters.

Eventually,  **mnkm** also had the idea of making a future-story series following the idea of the Christmas special from the first rewrite. Specifically, putting Remilia and Rin together- but  _married_ instead of, uh, living together and dating but never confirmed marriage. Here's where he got hella crazy- I quote- "What if they left Etria and married in another Yggdrasil Labyrinth?"

Me: "...or they get married in High Lagaard after finishing a super legendary quest?"

Him: "Wait. What if... Remilia proposes to Rin after killing that EO2 boss with hundreds of arms?"

Me: "What the hell?"

Also me: "Let's do it."

When Rin tells Valerie of the Golden Deer Pub that they even fought a monster with over hundred arms, that was a reference to Hecatoncheir (Briareus?), whom  **mnkm** seems to be going crazy about currently over the design. (He has a fascination for wild bizarre monster designs as well, I guess.) I thought it'd be stupid if she and Rin fought the monster alone, though, since they'd have to be damn overpowered for that, so then he suggested having a story where they teamed up with some local explorers to fight it.

Then this great idea popped up: "The Movie"s series. Or, uh, "the story" or "the novel" stories? You get the idea.

We're also now planning 'movie'/'novel' (whatever) stories for after the completion of the first ReTold series. The Hecatoncheir story can wait, though, we figured that if any novel series is going to be written, the first should definitely be the elemental dragons. Why would we skip that?

So yeah. This is sort of future advertising. We hope you stay tuned for future faninstallments and stuff! ...that's all for this chapter, lmao. Wow, this is long.


	2. Remilia (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timing of this commentary: (Chapter 8) of The Hexer's Story.

When I first played Etrian Odyssey Untold, I fell in love with the franchise right away. Jumped right into researching lore and characters and everything. Then, I decided to try Classic Mode, and lo and behold. The cutest design I saw was the gloomy, depressing Hexer female portrait (the one that wasn't covered in curse markings like some sort of Naruto villain.)

That was when I first felt a fire burning in my heart. "Fanfiction time," it said.

So I wondered what to name her. At first I considered using demon names and maybe ridiculous sounding spell names. The first thought was 'Astaroth', but then I decided that had too much cringe to it. That and also it didn't fit her. Then I thought about naming her 'Lucy', since that name makes me think of 'succubus'. But then... yeah, I felt like I've been considering too many 'Lucy' in various stuff, so I dropped it as well.

Then 'Remi' came to me, and in a moment of familiarity, I searched and found that Touhou had someone named 'Remilia'. So I thought: "let's use that".

Thus Remilia was born.

Next was her story. I wondered what to do- making her just a normal traveler would be boring. She looked way more than just a normal traveler. GIven that she was a Hexer, though, that was pretty normal, but I wanted her to be special. Different from other adventurers. ...I can't spoil at this point, but in the original and first rewrite, I wasn't too creative, so she was just that- a normal adventurer who knew of the Yggdrasil Core in advance and aimed to stop it.

Yes, that was stupid. So that's no longer the story.

Since that topic is locked for now, next: her character.

I was never that good of a writer. To top it off, I was crazy about lesbians (yuri: no, that's not an offensive nor oppressive slang, I'm seriously pissed I saw this sort of logic on Twitter a few times). I wanted to ship her with the female Medic portrait, and unfortunately, it became a bit too obvious since Remilia became quite smitten way too fast. Even in the first rewrite attempt, she was already doing something like planning to keep her safe and getting all red at the smallest contact and stuff.

One reason I hated my old self back then was exactly because of that. The romance was pretty forced, it was pretty... well, unrealistic too, really. Or something of that line.

In the second rewrite ( **mnkm** ), Remilia's less emotional. In fact, she starts off as this seemingly emotionless girl, who has normal thoughts and (mental) comebacks, but doesn't really interact much- an image fitting her base design. Even her interaction with the Medic, up to this point, is more or less normal and as acquaintances instead, since- you know- obviously romance wouldn't bloom between them that fast.

Her talent, as well, has been nerfed. I was initially too lazy to deal with the 'boring' parts like equipment enhancements and learning new skills, so I had her be this 'cool' and 'amazingly skilled' adventurer in the original, and even gave her possession of end-game weapons in the first rewrite. In hindsight, that was quite pathetic.

Here, my partner toned down her talent in combat. She remains true to her class as a Hexer, only providing buffs and debuffs and occasionally using a dagger or her staff to attack- which barely does much currently.

This might imply sadism, but to rub salt on her wounds, we've also decided to have her learn more about competency through failures. As a beginning guild, they're doing quite fine, but their first incident is Remilia temporarily losing an eye to a Reaping Shade. There was originally more written for that scene, but we ended up scrapping the parts leading up to it, and started with the Hexer lying on her back and being (dully) confused about losing an eye.

Then, really soon after, her confidence takes a small hit from Valeria's insensitive but casual remarks about that incident. Following that chapter, she tries to fight another Reaping Shade herself at night as training and succeeds, but loses an arm in the process. She then collapses, and following that, gets into a bit of a conflict...? ...with her guild.

At this point it almost feels like we're just throwing unpleasant stuff at her and laughing about it, even moreso because we're not good at morals and this sort of stuff, but I like and appreciate the way my partner has portrayed these, and I do honestly believe Remilia will learn a bit slightly from these hardships.

Nonetheless, I want Remilia to be, at this point, a sort of slightly awkward character who slowly becomes accustomed to living amongst people. (If you mind the phrasing that much, guess what; it's kinda low-key spoilers.) I want her to slowly learn to care for her teammates, and in the long run (of course) learn to love.

...of course, again, it's not like I'm a sadist, but one spoiler present: she's going to suffer a couple more times. A majority of those planned events are especially ones I've planned long before we jumped onto this second rewrite.

For now, that's all I have to say about Remilia.

Perhaps next I'll write about Rin the Medic.


	3. Rin Oriole (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timing of this commentary: (Chapter 10) of The Hexer's Story.

When it comes to character changes, there's a lot to list (and more to come, but spoiler lock.) Remilia's backstory (spoiler lock) probably received the biggest change, if accounting for the fact that Valeria, Scarlet, Rin and Senna never had properly planned backstories. If we take that into consideration, however, Valeria's and Scarlet's are relatively simple- they're orphans. That's all we've touched.

But Rin's and Senna's are probably two of the biggest ones we've inserted into the series.

Saving the Ronin for later, the Medic girl- or rather, the Medic class itself was a bit complicated for me. From the get go, Rin was set to be on Remilia's guild. And the brown haired Medic male, I had plans for him- but I hadn't laid it out yet. The other two Medics, the orange haired male and the green/grey/something haired female, I drew a blank. Putting in too many characters would kll my already dumb brain.

Then,  **mnkm** remarked that the orange haired male looks like he'd be the father of Rin.

So I thought. Hey... those remaining two Medics... yeah! Rin's parents. And then, more ideas kept coming- finally! Turn them into a well-known guild. Have them be Medics  who knew how to do other stuff too (I had only learnt around that time about the whole 'retire' ability of the Etrian series). And then, I was done with Rin's backstory.

Adventurer parents, famous in a two-man guild, disappeared. She's an orphan along with Valeria and Scarlet now- solely so that it's not weird why she'd be friends with someone weird like Valeria in the first place.

And the reason I named her Rin? I was initially reminded of the Vocaloid character Kagamine Rin. ...that's it. Yeah.

Backstory asides, her character is the hardest one for me to decide.

In my original and first rewrite attempt, her role was basic- be the gay girl Remilia falls for. Be the gay girl who falls for Remilia.

And dear gods. She was so... fucking.. gay. She even has an almost-yandere moment in the first rewrite where she swears to herself to get stronger and protect Remilia. Why? I'm not sure. I must have been pretty crappy at writing at that point.

But here, in  **mnkm** 's rewrite, she's exactly how I wanted her to be. She's shy, but not anime-level shy. She's just... a normal girl ike anyone else, but doesn't speak her mind often, or at least, doesn't make her own decisions often. But I also wanted her to be someone who properly speaks her mind when emotional. Someone who gets a bit carried away or loses control the moment she can't think of anything else.

That's what the drama parts of the second rewrite were supposed to depict. My partner didn't write that out too well, though, but that was to be expected, and I can't blame him- we both are terrible at writing drama, that sort of serious stuff. Bummer.

But I do still love the way she is portrayed, though. Along with being a slightly shy girl when normal and straightforward when emotional, she's also this... caring figure of the guild. Remilia cuts herself to use blood as ink? That's a no no. The Medic of the group knows her shit, and when she says that's not good, she means it. It's almost like she's the sister of the group, but she just... doesn't have the sister vibe. But still.

I do still plan on shipping her with Remilia. Heck, we already have a side-story sequel where they get together. It's canon (to this noncanon fanseries). So yes, they will get married.

But they will suffer a lot before reaching that point, though. And that's not good, but that's what we will stick to. God, I am mean.

Now, Rin's backstory hasn't been fully explained yet. We were going to write down more, but I was already running out of fuel, so I said we should just have her be unable to properly and fully recollect childhood stuff, so now we're just left with small mentions of her parents and their guild Plus Five. But more will be explored regarding her- it's a key part of the full series, I suppose.

I'm even planning a side-story around Rin's mother, but hey. Again, spoiler-lock. We'll get to explaining more of that soon. Hopefully  **mnkm**  still sticks around, haha.

That's all for Rin Oriole right now. More will come some other time.

Next up... perhaps Valeria the Landsknecht, who definitely isn't the same person as Valerie the publican of the Golden Deer Pub.


	4. Chapter 12: The Ganges Bakery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timing of this commentary: (Chapter 12) of The Hexer's Story.

Before this chapter came out, we had a bit trouble with deciding how to proceed with the story. We initially planned Part 2 to contain 10 chapters as well, just like Part 1, but because we want to keep each chapter around 1500-3000 words, and we often write pointless things into our works, we both realized that we'd have to change that number if we want to put in more characters and scenes and plans. So I changed it to 20 chapters for Part 2, but then  **mnkm** said 15 is good enough, and that we can change later.

To be more specific, though, this Chapter 12 came from our want to introduce new characters and involve more avatars. We have most of EO1 and EO2 avatars planned out as characters already, including the alternate color swaps from the later games, so we ended up with a lot of characters currently unused, and for EO1 series, we didn't want to just have only Remilia's guild be the characters.

Introducing: Robin and Ribbon of the Denali family, and Aquiea and Violet of the Ganges family. They're the Protector avatars; Robin and Ribbon are the 1st male and female Protector avatars, Aquiea is the blue haired palette swap of the 1st female Protector avatar, and Violet is the purple haired palette swap of the 2nd female Protector avatar.

Trivia: yes, their family names come from rivers. Why? I'm not exactly sure, I came up with 'Robin'due to a vibe, and 'Aquiea' and 'Violet' from their hair colors (Aquiea's just a corruption of Aqua).  **mnkm** 's the one who thought of Ribbon's name and both family's... well, family names, from rivers.

input from  **mnkm** : "I just felt like it."

Right, so that's that. Back to chapter commentary.

We were initially going to get to introducing Senna right away, but we wanted to introduce other characters too, and we didn't want to rush into the more important plot points. From the previous chapter, my collaborator had Rin invite Remilia to the bakery for next morning, a rather nice move on her part, but it's just an innocent friendly invite to both. We're not starting the ship yet. But anyways, with that having been done, we thought it'd be great to introduce the two families now in the breakfast episode, especially considering we already dropped their intended family names into that chapter.

That's essentially why we wrote Chapter 12 like it was written. Senna the forgotten character will be appearing in Chapter 13. ...or 14, but I'm praying it'll be 13.

That's pretty much it.

...yes, okay, we have more to discuss. Next important thing... did you catch that at the beginning of Chapter 12? Remilia's dream features a certain important someone. Of course, it's just a dream, but what does this mean? Is Remilia some sort of chosen one, to receive hints about Primevil? Or is Primevil mysteriously fascinated by her and haunting her dreams starting from now? That's... well, I mean, that's better left to imagination.

Yes, no, the more important thing I want to discuss here as well is Remilia's character- again. Or rather, a Hexer. What is a Hexer? Someone who can curses, thus they use dark magic, I assume. In the Etrian Odyssey universe, we only know of around six Hexers- the four avatars, Tlachtga, and one of the Blot's from Nexus. (Though I've only played U1 and read about N.) I'm not certain about Blot's case since I can't find any footage of the Hexer one, but from Tlachtga we see that their 'cloaks' are pretty cool, shadowy and controllable. The avatars also have that vibe, minus the controllable part, but I just assumed that's how it worked.

So I put it in fancanon that Hexers' cloaks are cursed. I mean, it wouldn't even be a stretch- look at how the avatars are all tied up by some whacky artifacts. Assuming they've been cursed in return for the power of dark magic, it doesn't sound too crazy. Maybe the cloaks are affected by the curse or energy and becomes sentient, or contrllable shadowy tentacles. Regardless, it's cool.

But then, question: if, supposing the cloaks are cursed, is it safe to remove it? Can it be removed at all? Or the necklace artifacts, can they be removed?

So I added in the implication that Hexers don't bathe. I mean, they look hella filthy and gloomy anyways. Probably isn't too crazy, again.

But Remilia did say she had bathed before, just... long ago. So the current guess me and my collaborator are going with is that Hexers probably still bathe, but not often, and probably never change their clothes due to the lack of need to. It's probably possible for them to wear other clothings, so that's why we made Rin get Remilia into better attire.

On that note, relating to the clothe change dilemma, we're going to be introducing another added concept to the series in the next chapter as well: Magic Armor Reinforcement. It has to do with the 'appearance of someone while equipped with armor' thought.

If Remilia's equipped with a helmet, how can anyone see her? Or how can she move, it must be really heavy to provide high defense! Such thoughts bother me, so that's why.

Anyways, I'll start writing about Valeria and/or Scarlet soon. I've been wanting to get to them.

That's all for this commentary.


	5. Valeria Wren (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timing of this commentary: (Chapter 12) of The Hexer's Story.

Valeria has a... rather funny story to her name.

In the original, her name was Valerie. Does that ring any bells? Yes. Valerie is also the name of the publican (bartender) of the Golden Deer Pub. The reason for that mix up is actually because I didn't pay much attention to NPCs, so I completely forgot the bartender Valerie had a name. I later discovered that while replaying the game through Classic Mode, as I decided to start paying attention so I could come up with drama or some stupid stuff.

So then I had a short humorous gag of the publican Valerie being 'Older Valerie' and the Landsknecht Valerie being 'Young(er?) Valerie'. It... was quite confusing.

I don't recall if I changed her name to Valeria in the first rewrite, but my collaborator  **mnkm** eventually stuck to 'Valeria' because... well, I mean. No shit, it'd be too confusing if we wrote a scene with those two together. So then, Valerie became Valeria.

It's halfassed, and it's stupid, and we actually still have problems mixing the two up. (Just recently in Chapter 11, we found a typo where Valeria was the one serving drinks in the bar for one line. God I am embarrassed. My collaborator shrugged it off and fixed it.) But at least their names are different now, and it's more humorous now, at least for me.

We never actually planned a family name for the brunette, or if I did in the original or rewrites, I completely forgot. But after I was inquired about it, I decided to go with birds as the motif for the three party members' family names. Rin Oriole, Valeria Wren, and Scarlet Ibis. Oriole, Wren and Ibis are all bird species (or some science thing) that I found via Google rather easily, so it didn't take much effort. There's also really no reasoning to it, simply being that I just randomly decided to stick the bird motif on them.

Similarly, Scarlet never had a family name (that or I also don't recall), but Rin's a different matter. Buuuut I'll talk about those in future commentaries.

Back to Valeria.

Valeria's character had been one of the first few I had plans for. Following Remilia, who I wanted to be the main character because obviously I was crazy for her, the next avatar I took a liking to was the brown haired female Landsknecht avatar. I took a look at her and I thought immediately- 'gag character'. She was going to be the loud, annoying, funny character.

Either that, or she reminded me of Miu from the comedic slice of life series Ichigo Mashimaro (Strawberry Marshmallow), somehow. It's... it's probably that.

Nevertheless, Valeria's role was always simple- be the strange, energetic but joke character of the group.

Eventually, while thinking of ways to make Remilia and Rin stupidly gay in the original, I felt like pouring more lesbianism into the story and put Valeria with Scarlet. Then I got hooked on that too, especially when I decided Scarlet's character to be tsundere and imagined her with the stupidly goofy Valeria. However, the shipping part is where things take a bit... messy turn.

I don't have a copy of the original anymore (I regret deleting it), but I think I wrote Valeria to be a bit of a... sexual flirt, at some point. Of course, in the first rewrite, I had a heavy shiptease scene where she showers and playfully messes around with Scarlet (but not to the point of having sex), simply being her way of mischievous flirting. In the original though, I feel like I recall writing an actual sex scene between her and Scarlet, and now that I think back to it, it feels so forced. I mean, it was during when I put lesbians into everything, but still. (Either I wrote it and can't remember, or I wrote but removed it before posting. Nevertheless, it's gone now.)

For the current/second rewrite, she was the one toned down the most. In fact, at this current point in time (in-universe), she and Scarlet has the least shiptease so far. The only instance where anything between them is hinted is during Chapter 3, where Scarlet is slightly flustered by the idea of getting matching weapons. It's a bit ridiculous, but we put that in for no reason other than to at least keep a slight trace of the ship.

Of course, Valeria doesn't really think much about it. In fact, similarly to Remilia and Rin's relationship reset, Valeria currently doesn't see Scarlet that way as well. To her, Scarlet is her friend, her childhood friend who also had no parents, like Rin. She's outgoing, energetic, easily excited and wishes to become a famous explorer.

Side note: I write her in the Hexer and Medic side story as a retired Landsknecht, but that's not really too spoilery, because hey; it's the future, it's bound to happen.

Back to this. The Valeria/Scarlet ship hasn't sailed yet in the current rewrite, nor is the ship even halfway built. What exists is just a small toy ship on Scarlet's part, who keeps her toned-down but still existing love for the brunette.

Another toned down aspect of Valeria is the very character I wanted her to have- her idiotic side. While she still keeps up the goofy character act, her stupidity isn't as big as it was before, and she's now more like the wild girl who likes being stupid but can be wise or calm or caring as well. She tells Remilia about Rin's backstory during Chapter 8 (behind the scenes), and she's also the one who suggests to her to try and trust the girls a bit more, and open up to them a bit more.

What I want for Valeria to become is the sort of girl who, while she dreams to become am amazingly well-known adventurer, is living her life simply to have fun. I now want her not to be the token idiot character, but the wisest (not smartest) and/or calmest with a knack for doing things that amuses her. This is mostly just because my judgement based on her avatar appearance sort of changed as time passed.

...it might also be a bit because we're both slightly afraid of the possibility that anyone would find our rewrite and be offended by her portrayal, but never mind that.

There isn't anything else that I can discuss about Valeria at this point. I'll return to her later in a future commentary, when the story has progressed more.

Coming next- I'll be talking about the other Landsknecht, Scarlet Ibis.

...that, or I'll talk about the coming Chapter 13 first, where Senna is set to appear officially, not counting Chapter 10's post-chapter section.


	6. Scarlet Ibis (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timing of this commentary: (Chapter 13) of The Hexer's Story.

The very moment I laid eyes on the redhead female Protector avatar, I thought- she's the tsundere girl. She's definitely the tsundere girl. And immediately, I pulled the name 'Scarlet' out of my ass just for her, simply because of her red/scarlet hair. Her design, I had a bit trouble with remember, though- I often got her appearance mixed with with the likes of Steins;Gate's Kurisu, forgetting the avatar's spiky hair, something I'd finally learn to remember not long ago.

Anyways. Scarlet Ibis. Like Valeria, she never had a family name until recently. Her name is, again, also pretty simple- scarlet hair. ...that's it.

Initially, in the original run, she was a lot closer to the cliched oversteretyped tsundere characte.r Easily embarrassed, a hell lot of gay blushing, and definitely dishonest. Hell, just like I said with Valeria, she originally had lots of rather sexual implications with Valeria. I'm still pretty sure I wrote something like a sex scene at some point with the two, but I never found it before deleting it, and, well, it's definitely gone now.

Scarlet's the hardest character for me to deal with, personally. Remilia was the mystery girl, Rin was the (slightly/toned down) shy girl, Valeria was the whack quack. What could Scarlet be? It was only natural that the smarts should go to Rin, considering she was a Medic. I considered making Scarlet a battle maniac with small brain, but the idiotic part was already sort of taken by Valeria. Again, I initially stuck the overused tsundere character onto the first run and the first rewrite, but eventually I decided that wasn't good.

So before the second rewrite collaboration, I wondered again, how to make her a more likable character (for me, at least).

She's now an orphan Landsknecht who retains slight feelings for Valeria, she's the sane one who probably keeps Valeria under control, and... well, I couldn't think too much about it. Eventually I got the idea to separate the smarts into two- the medical goes to Rin, the history or whatever goes to Scarlet.

It still wasn't much to go by. What else could I possibly add to her character? What else does her avatar scream to me?

A dad figure. A dad figure! Scarlet should totally be weak for a dad figure! (Not in the kinky way... I'm going to kinkshame you if anyone whispers 'daddy'.) Visil, the well-known and respected chieftain of Radha, could totally be a target of admiration for Scarlet. She could definitely be the one who wants to get closer to VIsil and perhaps earn praise that she never recalled from her now deceased parents.

And then that's that.

...it's really hard to talk about Scarlet's character, gosh. What else is there?

I feel like currently, we're doing an okay job with portraying her as perhaps what could be the one most supportive of Remilia. Or rather, the mediator of the group. She tries to be understanding of everyone and doesn't want both sides of any argument to explode upon each other, I suppose? It's... it's really hard for me to discuss Scarlet, the more I think about it.

...ah, right. One other thing I can talk about is her weapon choice. She's a Landsknecht, and she wielded a sword at first. I was originally going to have Valeria switch to using axes, but in my replay, I had already given Scarlet the axe instead due to... terrible skill point allocation. For convenience's sake, I had Scarlet switch to an axe.

...it really isn't all that hard or deep.

Gosh, I really can't come up with much for Scarlet. I guess she's the more boring character of the group, history-wise.

Well, that's all for this one, I guess, sadly.

Hopefully I can write about Senna in the next chapter without spoiling plans, or I might focus on something else instead. Adios.


	7. Re:Told Universe (2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timing of this commentary: (Chapter 14) of The Hexer's Story.

I've been a bit caught up in life, so Senna's chapter will come later. (But it's more because she's hardly made much appearance in the main series so far.)

More importantly, I've been wondering how to proceed with the series so far. Although my collaborator has no qualms with following my plans, I'm actually a bit worried about the pacing of the story. On one hand, I want to actually finish the series before we both lose motivation and leave it for dead for the third time. On the other hand, a rushed story would be absolutely terrible.

And furthermore, with the introduction or more screentime of characters like Dr. Leabo (Medic) or the Denali twins (Protectors) or Ganges twins (alternate color Protectors), it'd be a huge waste of potential to focus entirely on Remilia's side of the story.

Funny, even though it's titled 'The Hexer's Story'.

But now, I've figured that hey... just because it's Remilia's story doesn't mean it has to be entirely Remilia-centric.

I mean, can't I just turn it into 'Remilia-era story'? ...or something similar but less grandiose.

The story will still have Remilia as the main focus, but I want to dive more into other characters too. Dr. Leabo, Denali twins, Ganges twins, perhaps even Senna, maybe even Visil, but more importantly, the relationship between our main characters that is to come, that should be something we incorporate properly into the story rather than try to proceed through the game's events before we die out.

So me and my collaborator shall clear things up a bit...

Part 1 refers to the first ten chapters. We say it's 'Part 1', but really, it's more like the Introduction Part.

Part 2 will start from the 2nd Stratum: Primitive Jungle, and will contain an unknown amount of chapters. Initially I wanted to give it ten to twenty chapters for the stratum alone, but now I'm going to scrap that idea and just make the entire point from the 2nd Stratum to whatever the second part.

I haven't planned out too much, but I do know that there will be a Part 3, and Part 3 will start from the point where Kupala (the Forest Folk NPC) becomes less of an antagonist and more of a... recovering patient? (You know, the part in the Untold game where we took her home under our care because cliched protagonist decisions. Is that story-mode only? I don't know, I never actually get that far in Classic Mode plays.) From there, to the confrontation with the Yggdrasil Core, will be Part 3.

And then... this is already huge spoiler enough, but there will also be a Part 4! I have more plans for the story, and I'll say this in advance: the Three Elemental Dragons, Alraune, Golem, Manticore, or whatever, will  _not_ be in the main story. Well, I mean, I'm saving those for novel-styled standalone stories later, but whatever.

Part 4 will be set after the defeat of the Yggdrasil Core... immediately after, of course. Whoops, can't spoil too much though. But that's also where the Untold cast (Frederica's crew) will leave the stage- speaking of which, I intend to involve them a bit more into Re:Told too, perhaps somewhere in Part 2.

So basically, to sum up that stuff:

Part 1: Chapter 1 - 10 (1st Stratum: Emerald Grove)

Part 2: Chapter 11 - ??? (2nd Stratum: Primitive Jungle) (3rd Stratum: Azure Rainforest) (4th Stratum: Sandy Barrens)

Part 3: ??? - ??? (5th Stratum: Lost Shinjuku) (Very slightly, 6th Stratum: Claret Hallows?)

Part 4: ??? - ??? (6th Stratum: Claret Hallows)

Final Chapter: ???

...something like that.

And before I end this chapter and go into revising the next main story chapter with my collaborator  **mnkm** , I'll drop some foreshadowing from the main story. Remilia's mystery background hasn't been detailed much yet, but we've already included a small scene in Chapter 11 where, while discussing rumors of the jungle girl (Senna), Remilia hints a knowing the identity of a rumored girl in the labyrinth. While it doesn't hint much for the future chapters or future plans, it  _can_ and  _should_ (and hopefully it does) raise a few eyebrows and questions about Remilia.

...but, well, not like we're good at this anyways.

And that'll be all. Ja ja, see you folks next time, where I'll discuss... uh... something. I dunno.

...who am I kidding, the empty audience seats isn't motivating.

...though I am surprised this received one kudos at all. Wow. Here I thought nobody actually reads the series but oh well. Thanks, friendly supporter.

Next chapter, which will be delayed until... well, more main series chapters, shall be either about Senna the Ronin, or one of the bakeries' Protectors!

Good day, fellas.

 


	8. Re:Told... Re?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timing of this commentary: (Chapter 16) of The Hexer's Story.  
> Timing of this commentary: (Re:Chapter 1) of The Hexer's Story.

Bad news.

So we were kinda off for a long while (for this series, at least). Then, as we were about to get back to it... the documents were we kept a huge map of plans and character relationships... kinda got lost.  _Oh no, yikes. Initiate emergency._ (Short explanation: basically one day we discovered Twine and how it's like a storyboard thing... application... thing. And, uh, the basic gist of it is that the way we use it is exactly the way we wanted to store notes on story plans. Somehow, the document for Re:Told 1 disappeared, so... ouch.)

Seems like it was some sort of glitch related to making a duplicate of, and then deleting the duplicate. Now, word of God says  **tmnkm** was just curious and didn't know the original document would disappear as well (sounds like a glitch to me), and really, I don't blame him: I would've done the same thing too, more out of boredom than curious though.

Anyways, in the meanwhile, friend-sake plug:

Have you read  **tmnkm** 's Pokémon fanfiction,  _Of Flames and Leaves?_ Consider checking it out if you're into Pokémon + isekai (hero gets sent to another world) stories.

Well, actually, normally I don't advertise these crap, but I'm advertising it because  **tmnkm** is currently on a rewrite spree for it, starting from the first chapter. (And as of this point, he has rewritten the first five chapters now.)

How is this related? Well, well, ya see. Now that we're kinda more caught up with recovering the lost document of Etrian Re:Told 1 plans (and by that we mean recalling whatever we can and writing them down, and hopefully not losing them again), we've decided to rewrite the old chapters of Re:Told as well (not with a new story this time, but with chapter replacements).

Of course, we're currently going at a slightly fast pace because we've got all the time (holidays, woo!). Then again, holiday time is almost up.

Buuuut then again again, it's holidays. We have all the time to rewrite, so hopefully we'll catch up in time and keep going on.

I'm assuming I'll post this commentary  _after_ the first chapter's rewrite is done. (That's an order, partner. Hurry up.)

So for what we've planned, we're changing Remilia's introduction to Etria. Instead of travelling to Etria on a merchant's carriage, we're having her just... show up one day. Trust me, I know it kinda takes away a bit from her, but this is kinda necessary for her backstory now that we thought about it together. Meh, meh, spoilers? Not really but whatever.

We're also going to add a bit more interaction with the other characters, but the content should most likely be similar to the previous original (previous rewrite).

...okay, that was the commentary for our losses, and for Re:Chapter 1.

Now for Chapter 16.

By the time we were almost done with Chapter 16, a small mistake caused us to lose the end part and made us write it again (with several things forgotten). That's why, slightly tired, we decided that we should prooooobably start our rewriting plan, and pause the story for now and catch up to Chapter 16 later to properly perfect it.

Regarding the contents...well, this stretches a bit back into Chapter 15 (notably the end), but you might notice I'm now trying to pit Raquna with the Highlander (genderbent). This is because... well, no reason, really. We both have always loved yuri/lesbian content, but for the most part, it's my planning. Remember I initially had a separate Re:Told story for the Highlander part of the game (kinda like an AU... of an AU... fanfiction)- just like the old Re:Told story, there were hella lots of planned lesbian action.

Of course, I could only really think of Highlander (genbend) being put with Frederica at first, though. Then I kinda got into Highlander (genbend) with Rosa (the maid). Then Raquna. Then I thought, hey, since Raquna likes drinking herself drunk, maybe she can go crazy and conquer all the girls. Then it kinda got crazy and... let's just say we have plans for that, and as of now, it's Raquna and Highlander (genbend), with obviously noticeable traces of a jealous Frederica.

Although their guild (Mastema) aren't main characters here, they will appear enough times to not be cameo or small side characters, but I guess they're not almost-main characters. But their relationships (notably the hella gay girls) should still be pretty noticeable, I guess, at least whenever they appear.

Well, that's really all I have to say for now. Not feeling too motivated.

Aaaand also busy assisting with the rewriting, and also just surfing through YouTube for stupid videos, and also... also... god

fuck i'm tired i want to sleep forever

bye

(whoops, posted this before rewrite of chapter 1 finished)

(yeah i did this on purpose because i thought it'd be funny)

(hurry up tttrrrrriiiiii) (minakami) (what the hell even is a minakami)

 **edit:** it's from mai minakami you swine


End file.
